Tank McNamara has been exploring the psychological implications of thought balloons. Here's yesterday's strip, which illustrates the point that despite the crucial role of "theory of mind" in human evolution and child development, the ability to attribute beliefs, knowledge and emotions to others is not always a good thing.

14 Comments

Oren said,

Maybe you will like this post, about "understanding" the "language" of penguins.

[(myl) Since the point of the described research is that male penguins' calls are an honest signal of amount of body fat (more is better, as far as female penguins are concerned), we should refer to the kind of communication involved as "theory of body" rather than "theory of mind".

This kind of fitness signaling — honest or not — is ubiquitous in nature, going back roughly as far as sexual reproduction does, since it's a natural consequence of sexual selection.]

Josh said,

tablogloid said,

I was raised in a very strict Catholic family in the 1950s. I also read a lot of comic books. As a result, every Sunday as I sat through Mass, I was so sure that the priest could read my thought captions that I used to brush my hand over the top of my head to try and pop the bubble and erase the copy.

Rubrick said,

There are problems with the embiggening in Safari. The thought bubbles are rendered as transparent, not white, and so when the image is enlarged in place whatever is behind it shows through, rendering the text illegible.

Mark P said,

chris, you haven't followed the logic. It's all a big conspiracy. The mindreaders have to act as if they could not read minds, or the non-mindreader (me, and perhaps Sean) would catch on. Where's your paranoia?

Sili said,

Am I the only one who has ever wondered if everyone in the world but me can read minds, and they're just being polite by not laughing and pointing at me?

Yes. But I've wondered whether my senses are reliable, and perhaps everyone is actually big green blobs that are just interpreted to be regular humans by my brain. (In this scenario 'regular humans' don't exist, of course.)